Anne Mulcahy is a former chairperson and chief executive officer of Xerox corp. and a director at Johnson & Johnson, Target, and Washington Post Co. According to one source, she had this to say about the situation:

“We’re long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better. It’s unfortunate when companies with a large percentage of women constituents don’t reflect that in their boardrooms.”

She also said:

“As Facebook and other young companies mature, they need to break out of this pattern and have more diverse representation. Women also need to be better represented in the private equity industry.”

A Fortune 500 survey discovered that those companies with 3 or more female members on their board outperformed those with fewer from 2005 to 2009, scraping in a 43 percent better ROE. Since Facebook’s 5 billion dollar IPO, the contents of its board strategy is faulted. Susan Stautberg, who is the the co-founder of NYBWCD or New York-Based Women Corporate Directors said this about female board members:

“It doesn’t make sense for a company that claims to be so forward looking to not have any women directors. If they just have an old boy’s network in the boardroom, they won’t have access to diverse ideas and strategies.”

Facebook’s board consisting of all men is rather odd considering the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is a woman who, in fact, is a supporter of gender equality; Sandberg is Facebook’s public face, she’s also the best paid senior exec. raking in 30.9 million dollars last year.

In light of this news, how do you feel about Facebook’s lack of female presence on their board? Does it anger you? Are you indifferent? Let us know exactly how you feel in the comments section.

5 minutes and 20 slides rotating automatically in front of NYC’s brightest geeks, what would you say? For nearly two years Ignite NYC has cultivated a vibrant community of artists, technologists, thinkers, tinkerers, and personalities to connect, develop new relationships and projects, and answer this challenge. Enlighten us, but make it quick!

Drucker discussed an issue which many deem important, but most of the solutions have been repeated and regurgitated across tech blogs around the internet – How can women become more involved in prominent roles in the world of tech?

Drucker’s perspective is simple; females in tech should start referring to themselves as women instead of girls. Her insights are pretty funny, and thought-provoking. If you’re wondering how she defines a “woman”, it’s someone who’s menstruated and paid taxes. The reason for the distinction is because the term woman is associated with maturity and power, while girl implies immaturity and less power. Simple enough.

If I can interject with my own thought, I think the problem comes from women getting gipped when it comes to age/maturity neutral descriptors. Let’s take a look…

Man – Woman
Boy – Girl
Male – Female
Guy – ummm…Girl

A guy can be anyone. There are 5 year old guys, and 90 year old guys. Yet, we equate a guy to a girl, even though we use the same term when we’re designating a female child. I think it’s time we devised a maturity neutral descriptor for women/girls. Or women could simply refer to themselves as such in the workplace; that is, after their first menstruation and tax filing.

Jenny Haniver, has started a website titled: Not in the Kitchen Anymore. The premise is simple, she records and documents her experiences playing first person shooters, specifically Call of Duty, and posts these experiences on the website. What you find on her website is pretty shocking, with a lot of it being so extreme it borders on the hilarious.

I found this site a few days ago, and was completely taken by it. Once you start listening to some of these recordings, you can’t stop. You’ll laugh, be amazed, and scared there are people like this who walk among us.

I actually got to speak with Haniver about her website, to gain a bit more insight concerning the project.

My Recorded Discussion With Jenny Haniver (NSFW: Language)

After talking with Jenny, it’s obvious she’s not looking for pity or to say that everyone acts in the same way as the people in her recordings. She simply wants to shed light on the problem, and show just how bad it can get for ladies on Xbox Live or any other online gaming platform.

Here’s what Jenny had to say about the site, “And that’s essentially the focus of my blog- the dated, hostile, and sometimes downright weird reactions men, and occasionally even other women, have to interacting with females in an anonymous setting that is considered to be male dominated (online video games, specifically first person shooters). Obviously sexism isn’t the only problem prevalent in online gaming, it’s just the one I’ve chosen to focus on.

This behavior is something that most female gamers will have to face at some point if they choose to game online. The aim of my project is education; some people genuinely have no idea this is going on. By exposing this type of behavior, I’m hoping to raise awareness- and possibly push people to remember that it’s a real live person on the other side of that microphone.”

To give you an idea of how a recording will go, here’s a transcript from one of the more tame samples:

RMP = random male player

RMP1: Huh?

RMP2: Can’t end it like that.

RMP1: And we got beat by a girl.

[laughter]

RMP3: Wisconsin, what’s up!

Me: You say that like that’s a bad thing.

RMP2: Nah it’s cool. As long- as long as you’re skinny.

[laughter]

RMP1: Her avatar is pretty hot.

RMP2: So are you skinny?

RMP3: Who is?

The website spun out of an art project she did for a college course, highlighting many of the quotes she recorded for the project.

She also set up an audio booth, represented by a blue controller and a pink controller. They doubled as MP3 players, with the blue controller playing sound bites from a male vantage point, with the pink playing what women hear while playing.

The website is a humorous, albeit sad look at what many people resort to when provided an anonymous shield. The only way you can combat this kind of nonsense is to call it out, and let other people know what’s happening. Haniver is just doing that in a creative, and funny way.

• 19% of users who play Facebook games say they’re addicted
• 69% of Gamers are women
• 56 million people play games everyday
• 290 million play games monthly
• Average time spent per month on Facebook: 421

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"Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment," said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development.

"We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it’s also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption."

Worldwide, women have higher levels of engagement with social networking sites than men. Women represent 47.9 percent of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they view 57 percent of pages and account for 56.6 percent of total minutes spent on these sites. Women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to men’s 3.9 hours, revealing the strong engagement women across the globe share with social sites.

Across each global region, Social Networking reached a higher percentage of women online than men. Social networking’s reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1 percent of females online, and in North America where it reached 91.0 percent of females. Europe saw 85.6 percent of its female online population visit a social networking site in May 2010, while in Asia Pacific, where parts of the region still face low broadband penetration and site restrictions, reported a 54.9-percent reach.

Other highlights from the report include:

*Although men are in the majority across the global Internet, women spend about 8 percent more time online, averaging 25 hours per month on the Web.

*Globally, women spend 20 percent more time on Retail sites overall than men. Among the various retail sub-categories, Comparison Shopping and Apparel sites reached the highest percentage of women at 24.8 percent and 18.7 percent, respectively, in May 2010.

*In the U.S., women are more avid online buyers than men, with 12.5 percent of female Internet users making an online purchase in February 2010, compared to 9.3 percent of men.
 

The new free mobile health service offers timely and expert health information through text messages to pregnant women and new moms through their babies’ first year.

The text4baby initiative is a partnership between the U.S. government and a number of corporate sponsors including all the major wireless carriers.

By texting BABY to 511411 (or BEBE for Spanish), women receive three free text messages each week timed to their due date or baby’s date of birth. The messages focus on a variety of topics including birth defects prevention, immunization, nutrition, seasonal flu, mental health, oral health and safe sleep. The messages also connect women to prenatal and infant care services and other resources.

Text4baby founding partners include National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB), Voxiva, CTIA – The Wireless Foundation, grey healthcare group (a WPP company) and founding corporate sponsor Johnson & Johnson.

U.S. government partners include the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense Military Health System.

"Text4baby is the first free mobile health service to be taken to scale in the United States," said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.  "We know that mobile phones hold tremendous potential to inform and empower individuals."

Related Articles:

> Best Buy Now Installing Google Mobile Apps On Smartphones

> Google Launches Analytics for Mobile Apps

> Usage of Mobile Web and Apps Doubles in 2 Years

"There lives a growing impetus for marketers – especially those working with Fortune 500 CPG brands who enjoy a majority female customer base, to build a better connection with women in the dynamic social media landscape," says Q Interactive President Matt Wise. "We know women are social creatures and highly active in mediums like Facebook, where they now outnumber men. Yet, we found, they are virtually uninfluenced – and sometimes put off – by brands in channels that are a routine part of their day."

Some findings from the study:

- 75% of women are "more active" in social networking than last year

- More than half (54%) visit social networking sites at least once per day

- 75% share that social networking sites "not really" or "not at all" influence what they buy

- 52% of women surveyed have "befriended" or "become a fan of" at least one brand

- 83% feel "neutral" or "negative" when they see a brand on a social networking site

- 10% of women engage in product / brand-related activities ("get product information, including coupons and savings" and "writing reviews about products") most on social networking sites – above common activities like "send private messages to friends" and "share photos"

"While brands seem to have such small influence within this space, which is relatively new territory for marketers, over half of the women surveyed have ‘befriended’ or ‘become a fan of’ at least one brand," says Drew Ianni, Chairman, Programming for ad:tech Expositions. "This tells us there is a willingness among women to partner with brands in social media – but the current dialogue is not where it needs to be."

Granted, it’s hard to say that a thousand women represent women all over the world, but the study does appear to indicate that there is some work to be done when it comes to marketing to women online, or at least in social networks. I have to wonder though, how much different are the numbers for men? Is this really about gender at all?

So what the heck does this have to do with Facebook you ask? In an article at MediaPost it appears that Facebook may be having their own trouble with the number 55. For them, however, it’s not about a speed limit but rather the shift in demographics in a direction that Facebook is not too familiar with which is down.

Earlier this year, women over 55 were identified as the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook. Now it looks like they’re going in reverse. During April and May, the number of U.S. Facebook users over 55 actually dropped by 650,000 after increasing by 1.6 million the prior two months, according to new data from the Inside Facebook blog.

This wouldn’t be so interesting if the announcement touting the growth of this segment just in February hadn’t sounded so out of place itself. So what is the reason? The editor for the Inside Facebook blog, Justin Smith postulated

“Maybe older users are still getting acclimated to how to use Facebook’s real-time stream to share information with friends and family”

On a personal note, I have watched one person who fits this category actually come on board with Facebook in the past month. It’s my mother-in-law. As an aside, it’s for this precise reason that I don’t use my Facebook page for professional purposes. I never thought that getting a comment on my status from someone could be so touching and bone-chilling all at the same time.

Oh yea, Facebook and business. Sorry about that. The most interesting statistic about Facebook is actually not this sudden exodus of the Ensure crowd but rather the slowing of overall growth. Caution: The following statistic is one that bemoans decreased growth not a decrease in overall users. It’s one of those “Hey, that’s not enough growth!” scenarios that plaques the Internet as a whole. You’ve been warned

Facebook’s overall growth slowed in the last two months from the beginning of the year. In April and May, active U.S. Facebook users increased 4% to 60.4 million, compared to 11% to 56.1 million in February and March.

Here’s the whole picture in a pretty picture:

Hey, growth is growth. Maybe the 55 and older crowd had vivid memories of the Cold War era and couldn’t take the Russian investment news. Who knows? Should we care?

Comments

The study also reports several other statistics that marketers should take note of:

• Women make up 56.2% of Facebook users—outnumbering men in almost every age group
• 25% of U.S. Facebook users are over the age of 35—considering that Facebook started as a college platform, this is very surprising.
• 45% of U.S. users are over the age of 26—this isn’t as surprising as you take into account that this is now about the average age of early Facebook adopters.
• Teenagers only account for 12% of Facebook users. This actually made my jaw drop. I would have thought teenagers would be the dominating age demographic on a social site like Facebook.

Are you surprised by these statistics? How will this affect your marketing strategy?

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To qualify for the workshop, applicants must:

- be a female computer science students currently enrolled in a Masters or PhD program at a university in the United States or Canada. Graduate students in any year of study are encouraged to apply.

– demonstrate academic excellence and leadership in the computing field
 
– maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.3 on a 4.0 scale or 4.3 on a 5.0 scale or equivalent in their current program

The event is three days long and will be all-expenses paid for as many as 75 applicants who are selected to participate in the workshop. It is being held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View January 22-25. It will include technical alks, career workshops, and of course networking opportunities.

Participants will also get to tour the Googleplex and meet Google engineers. The deadline for applying is this coming Friday – Decemeber 5.